Maricopa County, Arizona, in the Phoenix metropolitan area, saw the highest population growth in white, black and Hispanic residents last year, as well as the highest overall growth of any county in the United States, while Riverside and San Bernardino in California had some of the largest increases in Hispanic population, according to census estimates released Thursday.
Fort Bend County, in the Houston metropolitan area, Maricopa County and Tarrant County, Texas, saw the largest growth in Black residents.
Asian population growths were greatest in the Dallas area, Orange County, California, and King County, in the Seattle area, according to 2021 estimates released by the Census Bureau.
Riverside Counties, California; Lee, Fla.; and Utah, in the state of the same name; they also had among the largest white population growths last year.
This year, the bureau released estimates showing where population growth and decline occurred in the country between July 1, 2020 and July 1, 2021, capturing the first full year of the coronavirus pandemic. Data released Thursday provide details of those changes, which reflect growth in southern and southwestern states at the expense of some of the nation’s largest, most densely populated and most expensive metropolitan areas.
Eight of the largest cities in the United States lost population in the first year of the pandemic, with New York, Los Angeles and Chicago topping the list.
The largest decline in the black population was in New York’s King County, which makes up the Brooklyn area. The largest declines in white, Asian and Hispanic populations were in Los Angeles County, the nation’s most populous, with 9.8 million residents.